Yachting and Boating World forums: Please help us with your reports

First may I thank you for putting up this forum.

Personal experience.

Needles Channel has lobster pots in the main fairway. They are usualy the small orange ball kind but often are gallon or larger oil/water cans in black. They are almost exclusively unmarked with any owners details.

At the start of the RORC Bayona race last year in a SW F5 with a spring ebbing tide I tacked across the main fairway of the Needles Channel and caught a pot which was floated by a dark blue 25 or 50 litre plastic fuel type can. This was laying to tide and was almost invisible. It caught around the rudder and we had a wild broach to windward before the rudder ripped off. We then called the coastguard who in turn called the Yarmouth lifeboat. Meanwhile we drifted across the breaking waves on the Shingles bank and narrowly missed a grounding before we deployed the anchor.
According to the RNLI the rescue cost them in the region of £7,000.
The tow back to Gosport and the new rudder cost an additional £3,400 plus £4,200 compensation for the charter crew.
Had I know who owned the pot I would with certainty have sued them.

This month I sailed from Gosport to Falmouth for the AZAB race. I have made this passage may times and this is what I noticed on route.
Generaly a marked increase in the number of lobster pots mainly small balls or 1 gallon cans. Dartmouth is absolutely saturated with pots which present a very real hazard for any night time approach. Having seen them by day I wouldn't remotely consider a night approach and to be honest would when possible avoid Dartmouth all together.
Start Point is another area of great concern because of the overfalls and although on this occasion I went through there in 30 knots of wind against tide I had to dodge about a dozen. I dread to think how one would cope with being hooked in such dangerous waters.

Salcombe to Plymouth there are field of pots mainly but not exclusively topped by a flack and post. Again on a dark night you would be very lucky to see these.

Plymouth to Fowey field of pots are mainly scattered to the south of the Fowey approach again mainly black flagged.

Plymouth has a significant number of pots extending out from the harbour but again nothing like the concentration found outside Dartmouth.

Falmouth and approaches there are lobster pots but not in any serious concentration and again black flagged.

According to the staff at QAB Plymouth the MOD Police recognise the hazard and occasionaly clear poorly marked pots but the frequency of this event is unknown to me. They did however report a rather disturbing trend of fitting a wire for the last ten or fifteen feet of the rope to stop prop cutters cutting through and the incidence of boats being towed in o Plymouth because of fouled props is increasing.
Another interesting fact from QAB is that there is an ever increasing number of ordinary people who are equipping themselves with half a dozen pots, nipping out in a small boat and dropping them wherever they see fit.

Seperately I know that Christchurch Ledge is saturated with pots and the North Channel entrance to the Western Solent (traditionaly recommended to be the entrance used in stong winds) is also densely populated by pots.

My submittion would be that in my experience the pots on the South coast represent a real and present danger to small boats of all types. I am certain that these hazards are not confined to the South coast and other areas of the UK suffer just as badly. On a recent trip back from France I noticed a number of pots on a coal black night because they had small flashing lights on them. I also think that the use of black flags on a short lead from the marker buoy is very helpful not only in seeing the pot but also to gain an indication of the tidal flow affecting that particular pot. Although at night I agree that you only see these things when they are very close.

If you went for a walk in the Countryside and had to dodge snares there would be hell to pay and the practice would we stopped. I am not advocating that no-one is allowed to deploy pots but those that do should do so in designated areas with pots marked with the owners details. Black flag and a light.

Please take the time to add your thoughts/comments/observations/experiences with regard to pots because if we are going to affect anything we need evidence to present to the RYA. If we don't do anything it will get worse and we will suffer because of it.

Richard Houghton